As Bitcoin (BTC) moves from speculative asset to balance-sheet holding, organizations are being forced to confront a hard question: how do you secure BTC without giving up control?
In this interview, Kevin Loaec, CEO of Wizardsardine, explains why the company has now chosen to integrate insurance into its self-custody model and why this shift does not represent a compromise. He discusses the limitations of traditional custodial insurance, the operational challenges institutions face when managing BTC internally, and how partnerships like the one with Resolvr aim to complement, rather than replace, strong governance.
Loaec also shares his perspective on systemic risk, regulatory evolution, and what the future of enterprise Bitcoin security should look like when clarity, control, and resilience come first.
Bitcoin self-custody and insurance
- Wizardsardine has long focused on verifiable, self-custody Bitcoin security. What motivated the decision to integrate insurance into Liana Business now?
“For a long time, we were deliberately sceptical of insurance in Bitcoin. Most insurance offerings in this space exist to paper over custodial risk rather than reduce it. What changed is that we started seeing more serious organisations holding BTC directly on their balance sheets.
These teams were already doing the hard work of governance, controls, and internal policy design. For them, insurance was not about outsourcing responsibility. It was about resilience. The timing felt right to support that without compromising self-custody.”
- How does Wizardsardine differentiate itself from traditional custodial providers when it comes to institutional trust and risk management?
“Custodians ask you to trust them with keys, processes, and recovery. We take the opposite view. Trust should come from visibility and control.
With Liana, organisations can see exactly how access, approvals, and recovery work. There is no black box and no shared custody. From a risk perspective, that removes an entire category of counterparty exposure that custodians can never fully eliminate.”
- Can you describe the key governance challenges institutions face with self-custodied bitcoin, and how Liana Business addresses them?
“The biggest challenge is not cryptography. It is operational clarity. Business leaders want to know who can move funds, under what conditions, and what happens if someone leaves or something breaks.
Liana lets organisations define those answers upfront in a way that maps to how they already operate, rather than forcing them into a crypto-native workflow that nobody can explain later.”
Wizardsardine’s partnership with Resolvr
- What made Resolvr the right partner for bringing insurance to self-custodied bitcoin?
“Resolvr understands that insurance should not interfere with control. Their approach does not require handing over keys or introducing hidden dependencies. That alignment was non-negotiable for us. If insurance compromised self-custody, we would not do it.”
- The Bitcoin Denominated Insurance Collaborative (BDIC™) marketplace allows policies to be paid and settled in Bitcoin. How does this approach benefit institutions compared to fiat-denominated insurance?
“For organisations holding Bitcoin long term, settling premiums and claims in BTC removes unnecessary currency and settlement risk. It also avoids mismatches between what is insured and how claims are resolved. It is simpler and more honest from an accounting and risk perspective.”
- How do you foresee the partnership changing the broader landscape of Bitcoin insurance for enterprises?
“I think it helps reframe insurance as something that complements good governance instead of replacing it. If this model succeeds, it should encourage insurers to design products around verifiable control rather than custodial convenience.”
- Could you explain a scenario where self-custody with insurance actually reduces systemic risk?
“Systemic risk grows when assets concentrate behind a small number of custodians. Self-custody distributes that risk. Adding insurance on top of a well-designed self-custody setup helps organisations absorb isolated failures without creating single points of failure that affect everyone else.”
- How does Liana Business’ architecture ensure that insured bitcoin remains fully under an organisation’s control without introducing new points of failure?
“The insurance layer never sits in the signing path. Liana works with Resolvr and its marketplace partners to enforce policy on-chain. The organisation holds all signing authority. Insurance is assessed against that setup, not embedded inside it. That separation is critical.”
- Are there any limitations to the insurance coverage for self-custodied bitcoin, and how does Wizardsardine help clients navigate them?
“Yes, and there always will be. Insurance cannot compensate for poor internal governance or reckless policy design. We are very open about that. Part of our role is helping organisations understand what is insurable, what is not, and how to structure their controls so coverage actually makes sense.”
- What types of organisations do you expect to be early adopters of insured self-custody, and why?
“We are seeing interest from treasury teams, regulated firms, and organisations with long-term bitcoin exposure. These teams already think in terms of controls, audits, and continuity planning. Insured self-custody fits naturally into that mindset.”
- Do you see this model influencing regulatory perspectives on bitcoin holdings and custody requirements?
“Possibly, but slowly. Regulators tend to respond to operational reality rather than theory. As more organisations demonstrate that self-custody can be governed, auditable, and resilient, it becomes harder to argue that custody must always mean outsourcing control.”
- Looking ahead, what other innovations or integrations are you exploring to strengthen Bitcoin governance for enterprises?
“Our focus remains on clarity. That includes better tooling for audits, clearer recovery modelling, and deeper integration with how organisations already document and approve risk. We are less interested in adding features and more interested in removing ambiguity.”
Attributed to: Kevin Loaec, a co-founder of Wizardsardine, the company behind Liana, an open-source Bitcoin wallet and governance platform built for long-term security and verifiable control. He is a Bitcoin engineer with deep experience in protocol-level design, security architecture, and Bitcoin Core–adjacent development.